How is it that a meteor of that magnitude could enter earths atmosphere without warning? - Page 2

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - How is it that a meteor of that magnitude could enter earths atmosphere without warning? (Page 2 of 4)

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:44:47 PM EDT

[#1]

For fuck's sake, how old are you?

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:45:16 PM EDT

[#2]

It's a big freaking sky and the meteoroid was about the size of a fridge.

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:45:48 PM EDT

[#3]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Where were all the .Gov agencies, universities, private research labs on this?

How the hell did it enter unnoticed?

I really wish they would teach astronomy in school.

I'm a Scorpio whats your sign?

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:45:49 PM EDT

[#4]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Where were all the .Gov agencies, universities, private research labs on this?

How the hell did it enter unnoticed?

I really wish they would teach astronomy in school.

Or even just common sense.

Good one bro.... They can track space debris the size of gumballs orbiting the planet but cant track ones the size of basketballs with a terminal trajectory?

P.S. I think I hear your mom calling, your spaghetti-O's are ready.

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:46:50 PM EDT

[#5]

Quoted:
Does anybody here actually think the gov would tell us of a impact if they knew for certain ?

Not a chance at all we would be told.

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:46:53 PM EDT

[#6]

Well wasn't NASA the organization that tracked these things, and didn't we dismantle NASA?

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:47:05 PM EDT

[#7]

Quoted:
It was moving at Mach 20+ when it impacted. Can we intercept something at that speed?

If you have advanced notice you could certainly intercept it regardless of speed.

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:48:03 PM EDT

[#8]

you might be a little off on the size object they can track....

orbital stuff they have lots of time to look for and they know where to look. big difference.

Quoted:

Quoted:
Where were all the .Gov agencies, universities, private research labs on this?

How the hell did it enter unnoticed?

I really wish they would teach astronomy in school.

Or even just common sense.

Good one bro.... They can track space debris the size of gumballs orbiting the planet but cant track ones the size of basketballs with a terminal trajectory?

P.S. I think I hear your mom calling, your spaghetti-O's are ready.

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:49:47 PM EDT

[#9]

Eh, they estimate that we are aware of maybe 20% of potentially hazardous asteroids.....And those are defined as >100m diameter I believe.

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:50:02 PM EDT

[#10]

The thing was smaller than the refrigerator in your kitchen and coming out of deep space at eleventy-billion miles per hour. Rocks like that hit the atmosphere fairly regularly, but usually over uninhabited areas...which constitutes most of the earth. It's not a big deal...unless you're one of the poor bastards caught in the Russian Slap-Chop machine this morning.

On the flip side of that coin, some Russian window salesman is going to make his quota this month.

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:50:38 PM EDT

[#11]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Where were all the .Gov agencies, universities, private research labs on this?

How the hell did it enter unnoticed?

I really wish they would teach astronomy in school.

Or even just common sense.

Good one bro.... They can track space debris the size of gumballs orbiting the planet but cant track ones the size of basketballs with a terminal trajectory?

P.S. I think I hear your mom calling, your spaghetti-O's are ready.

LOL. You don't know fuck-all about what you're talking about, so you have to insinuate I'm a child.

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:52:21 PM EDT

[#12]

Quoted:

Good one bro.... They can track space debris the size of gumballs orbiting the planet but cant track ones the size of basketballs with a terminal trajectory?

The stuff they track is in low-earth orbit and usually from known sources...not random rocks flying out of nowhere.

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:54:28 PM EDT

[#13]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Of what magnitude? It was a small one.

Didn't look too small.... blew out windows and buckled store fronts from what I'm reading.

if you dont mind reading a Bit, This here is the first chapter of a Novel by John Ringo ("Live Free or Die") that explains how Skywatch works..and more inportantly WHY it doesnt work well.... While Fiction, John has a habit of getting his details correct with background stuff like this. First three paragraphs are what you want.

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:56:46 PM EDT

[#14]

Quoted:

Good one bro.... They can track space debris the size of gumballs orbiting the planet but cant track ones the size of basketballs with a terminal trajectory?

P.S. I think I hear your mom calling, your spaghetti-O's are ready.

Near Earth objects are very close in the grand scheme of things. Think of it as a bullet laying on your desk. Pretty easy to see where it is and keep track of, right?

Now imagine a bullet flying at you fired from a sniper hiding 200 yards away. The problem is a little more complex now, isn't it?

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:58:49 PM EDT

[#15]

They have more important shit to do like oppressing us.

Posted: 2/15/2013 1:58:55 PM EDT

[#16]

That meteor was a pissant. Just a few Kt in yield.

Ones like that hit the atmosphere once, maybe a few times a year. The ocean covers the majority of the planet, and out of the minority of the land surface, a majority of that is the poles, desert, jungles still. Despite there being 7 billion of us, we still don't cover that much of the surface. Siberia, the Amazon, the Sahara, the poles...

As to asteroids and short-period comets that would cause significant tsunamis, or climate change, or be large enough to be a complete extinction event for everything larger than bacteria, not counting long-period comets, we'll probably have everything mapped out that can significantly hurt us like that in the next few decades. The whole "It's a big sky" thing from Armageddon is kind of false, at least in the long run. With infra-red imagery, we can detect new moons of Pluto that are just a couple miles across. It is REALLY HARD TO HIDE IN SPACE. We can detect objects just a few meters in size that have a temperature differential of just a few degrees difference than the background sky. And this will only improve as technology advances.

The nightmare scenario is a long-period comet on an orbit that is largely behind the sun, then is visible only after it comes above the limb of the sun where it's hard to see it, and it's velocity etc. would give us little or no time to divert it. Statistically speaking, it's a long shot out of a range of long shots. And further statistically speaking, Jupiter would divert or destroy a fair portion of those.

Assuming humanity doesn't fuck it up, and regress to the point we lose the space capability to detect and divert asteroids, we'll have a pretty good shot at never having to worry about an extinction-level asteroid. And even many or most of the "city killer" sized ones will be detected eventually.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:04:07 PM EDT

[#17]

That fucking thing was about the size of a large arobics ball. Do you really think they can track shit like that? Yes maybe something could have possible picked it up on accident; but highly unlikely. And besides it would have been like playing paintball, we would have seen it just long enough to know its coming and close your eyes.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:06:02 PM EDT

[#18]

Quoted:

Quoted:

Of what magnitude? It was a small one.

Didn't look too small.... blew out windows and buckled store fronts from what I'm reading.

A 5.56 round does damage thanks to it's velocity of a mere 3200 some feet per second. That rock was probably going around 50,000 feet per second.

And it weighed in at about 10 tones. That's not that much rock. But it's a lot of rock at 50,000 feet per second

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:07:50 PM EDT

[#19]

Quoted:

Quoted:

Where were all the .Gov agencies, universities, private research labs on this?

How the hell did it enter unnoticed?

I really wish they would teach astronomy in school.

Or even just common sense.

Good one bro.... They can track space debris the size of gumballs orbiting the planet but cant track ones the size of basketballs with a terminal trajectory?

P.S. I think I hear your mom calling, your spaghetti-O's are ready.

This one wasn't orbiting the planet.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:11:57 PM EDT

[#20]

Impacts happen. Ever look at the surface of the Moon? There are no processes to erase the effects of impacts.

It isn't the responsibility of the government to protect us from such danger. That would be IMPOSSIBLE.

And keep it peaceful. The universe isn't.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:12:57 PM EDT

[#21]

That meteor was a WARNING

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:14:23 PM EDT

[#22]

Do you have any idea the volume of space that would need to be monitored to find all dangerous Near Earth Objects? It's a do-able task, but it's hardly trivial.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:15:01 PM EDT

[#23]

Take a pellet gun and shoot it at a football stadium, except make the pellet smaller, the stadium alot bigger and the pellet going 1000x faster. Track that and you'll get the picture of how difficult would be to track this guy.

ETA, and do it at night.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:16:20 PM EDT

[#24]

Quoted:
Do you have any idea the volume of space that would need to be monitored to find all dangerous Near Earth Objects? It's a do-able task, but it's hardly trivial.

It could be worse than looking for Hillary's G-spot.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:21:35 PM EDT

[#25]

Quoted:
Where were all the .Gov agencies, universities, private research labs on this?

How the hell did it enter unnoticed?

That little guy? I wouldnt worry about that little guy

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:21:53 PM EDT

[#26]

I knew about it for a while now. Watch out for Apohis

Predicting Apophis' Earth Encounters in 2029 and 2036
neo.jpl.nasa.gov/apophisPredicting Apophis' Earth Encounters in 2029 and 2036. SUMMARY. Researchers at NASA/JPL, Caltech, and Arecibo Observatory have released the results of radar

This one could be a E.L.E

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:23:40 PM EDT

[#27]

Quoted:
Where were all the .Gov agencies, universities, private research labs on this?

How the hell did it enter unnoticed?

Because it for one is impossible to watch all of the night sky. 2, many astronomers have already said this stuff happens once or twice a day, the chances of you seeing it are slim to none considering most of the earth is not inhabited by humans. (Something like less that 10% if I remember correctly.)

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:23:58 PM EDT

[#28]

Magnets

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:25:06 PM EDT

[#29]

Quoted:
There's like a dozen people world wide who professionally look for shit like that... our close section of the universe is really big and 12 people isn't a lot.

Quoted:
You think the government is paying someone to keep track of every two-foot diameter piece of junk in the solar system?

I hope you people aren't that naive. With all of the billions of dollars in satellites floating out there, you can guarantee that there are 100's of people who do tracking for a living. My wife is one of them and she works with many others, they go to conferences full of others in the same field, etc. There are things she can't tell me, but I am sure if we were all about to die she would let me know.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:26:07 PM EDT

[#30]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Where were all the .Gov agencies, universities, private research labs on this?

How the hell did it enter unnoticed?

That little guy? I wouldnt worry about that little guy

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:27:49 PM EDT

[#31]

Quoted:

Quoted:
There's like a dozen people world wide who professionally look for shit like that... our close section of the universe is really big and 12 people isn't a lot.

Quoted:
You think the government is paying someone to keep track of every two-foot diameter piece of junk in the solar system?

I hope you people aren't that naive. With all of the billions of dollars in satellites floating out there, you can guarantee that there are 100's of people who do tracking for a living. My wife is one of them and she works with many others, they go to conferences full of others in the same field, etc. There are things she can't tell me, but I am sure if we were all about to die she would let me know.

Ask your wife how many two foot diameter objects outside of near-Earth orbit they track.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:28:09 PM EDT

[#32]

probably broke off from, or was part of a debris cloud surrounding, that big asteroid

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:29:01 PM EDT

[#33]

Quoted:

Quoted:
There's like a dozen people world wide who professionally look for shit like that... our close section of the universe is really big and 12 people isn't a lot.

Quoted:
You think the government is paying someone to keep track of every two-foot diameter piece of junk in the solar system?

I hope you people aren't that naive. With all of the billions of dollars in satellites floating out there, you can guarantee that there are 100's of people who do tracking for a living. My wife is one of them and she works with many others, they go to conferences full of others in the same field, etc. There are things she can't tell me, but I am sure if we were all about to die she would let me know.

Can you tell us what entity your wife works for? I'm genuinely curious.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:30:18 PM EDT

[#34]

I didn't know about this = unnoticed?

They've know about it for a while. .

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:30:44 PM EDT

[#35]

Quoted:

Quoted:

There's like a dozen people world wide who professionally look for shit like that... our close section of the universe is really big and 12 people isn't a lot.

Quoted:

You think the government is paying someone to keep track of every two-foot diameter piece of junk in the solar system?

I hope you people aren't that naive. With all of the billions of dollars in satellites floating out there, you can guarantee that there are 100's of people who do tracking for a living. My wife is one of them and she works with many others, they go to conferences full of others in the same field, etc. There are things she can't tell me, but I am sure if we were all about to die she would let me know.

They track the stuff they know about. They concentrate on stuff in orbit, that is likely to hit a satellite. Tracking of stuff that isn't in earth orbit is limited to very large objects that pose a threat to global civilization. Oh, and they have to find them before they track them, which is really fucking hard.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:32:22 PM EDT

[#36]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Of what magnitude? It was a small one.

Didn't look too small.... blew out windows and buckled store fronts from what I'm reading.

Russkies reckon it was 100,000 tons

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:34:06 PM EDT

[#37]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Does anybody here actually think the gov would tell us of a impact if they knew for certain ?

Exactly my point, but for fuck sake... what are we paying them for then.... to go through all the effort of finding and watching for life threatening shit, only to sit on their hands?

As Billy Ray Thornton said in Armageddon, we only have funding to watch about one percent of the sky....and it's a big assed sky

Edit, I see someone has already said this

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:35:30 PM EDT

[#38]

Quoted:

Quoted:

Of what magnitude? It was a small one.

Didn't look too small.... blew out windows and buckled store fronts from what I'm reading.

Russkies reckon it was 100,000 tons

They must be hitting the vodka hard.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:36:44 PM EDT

[#39]

Meteors of that magnitude enter the earth's atmosphere often. They are not big enough to be considered a serious threat.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:36:51 PM EDT

[#40]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Of what magnitude? It was a small one.

Didn't look too small.... blew out windows and buckled store fronts from what I'm reading.

Russkies reckon it was 100,000 tons

They must be hitting the vodka hard.

It's what they said

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:37:06 PM EDT

[#41]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Of what magnitude? It was a small one.

Didn't look too small.... blew out windows and buckled store fronts from what I'm reading.

Russkies reckon it was 100,000 tons

wut?

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:37:06 PM EDT

[#42]

Quoted:

Quoted:

Does anybody here actually think the gov would tell us of a impact if they knew for certain ?

Exactly my point, but for fuck sake... what are we paying them for then.... to go through all the effort of finding and watching for life threatening shit, only to sit on their hands?

They don't sit on their hands. We pay them to find the shit so they can stock their bunker and climb in while we remain ignorant to our impending annihilation.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:38:30 PM EDT

[#43]

Quoted:
Does anybody here actually think the gov would tell us of a impact if they knew for certain ?

Your right.......they wouldn't. At least they wouldn't if they knew it would bring about chaos on a national level. I'm not talking about a decent size one that would be a city killer for they would have time to evacuate but I'm talking one that is a mile wide and would take out a few states.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:38:44 PM EDT

[#44]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Of what magnitude? It was a small one.

Didn't look too small.... blew out windows and buckled store fronts from what I'm reading.

Russkies reckon it was 100,000 tons

wut?

Maybe they're saying the explosion was 100 kilotons of tnt?

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:39:57 PM EDT

[#45]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Of what magnitude? It was a small one.

Didn't look too small.... blew out windows and buckled store fronts from what I'm reading.

Russkies reckon it was 100,000 tons

wut?

Maybe they're saying the explosion was 100 kilotons of tnt?

That would make sense.

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:41:14 PM EDT

[#46]

Now the Russkies are saying it was 10 tons according to the BBC but NASA reckon 7000 and going 40,000 mph

Posted: 2/15/2013 2:42:52 PM EDT

[#47]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Where were all the .Gov agencies, universities, private research labs on this?

How the hell did it enter unnoticed?

I really wish they would teach astronomy in school.
[/quote

Or even just common sense.

Good one bro.... They can track space debris the size of gumballs orbiting the planet but cant track ones the size of basketballs with a terminal trajectory?

P.S. I think I hear your mom calling, your spaghetti-O's are ready.

For your sake, I hope you're just trolling and not this scientifically illiterate.